On-page Optimization - Is an A grade absolutely necessary?
-
It is commonly stated that three exact keyword mentions on a page is best practice for SEO. Recently, however, I have noticed a few articles that have hinted against it. matt @highonseo briefly mentioned the subject here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/going-beyond-moz-metrics-to-answer-why-is-this-site-outranking-me
Also, one our clients competitors is ranking above them with only one exact mention of the keyword in the page title with no exact mentions in page copy. I know other factors can make a difference, but this is does raise questions of our on-site strategy.
I haven’t found any literature that specifically recommends using one exact match of a keyword, so any opinion would be very useful!
Thanks
-
I think that the page titles, URLS, and H1 tags are best for exact keyword placements. Using them in the page copy can often look out of place.
For example, your keyword might be “Car Repair London”. Inserting this as an exact form into the page copy could read something like “With 30 years of experience, our Car Repair London”.
Google is looking for user experience at the end of the day. What are your thoughts on making the page look as natural as possible?
@James Scaggs Do you have an example of this tactic?
Thanks
-
It is still an SEO best practice to use the exact match keyword on your page.
What Matt is talking about in the article is keyword stuffing, which is overusing a keyword on a page in an unnatural way, which can get you penalized. Including 2-3 mentions of your keyword on your page will help not hurt you and can help increase the relevance of the page in Google's eyes.
-
I recommend targeting themes of keywords rather than one exact match keyword. I typically choose the top 2-3 keywords per theme to target based on highest search volume and lowest competition.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to write an optimal h1?
I am working on optimizing the content on my site and am currently reviewing my h1s and seeing how they can be improved. What is the exact purpose of the h1 and how should it differ from the meta title?We sell clothing apparel on my site. So for example- my meta title for women's printed tops category is- Printed tops for women I Patterned Shirts & Tunics I Company Name. How should my h1 differ from this? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | whiteonlySEO0 -
If Product Pages Perform Well In Google then Is It Possible That Category Page Can perform Well In Google?
Hi All, For my ecommerce site I have optimized my product pages very nicely like good images, detailed information about products, good reviews, implemented schema for my product and reviews and very perfect onpage. Now my query is if my products pages performing well in google then there are chances that my category page rank well in google too? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wright3350 -
Home page and category page target same keyword
Hi there, Several of our websites have a common problem - our main target keyword for the homepage is also the name of a product category we have within the website. There are seemingly two solutions to this problem, both of which not ideal: Do not target the keyword with the homepage. However, the homepage has the most authority and is our best shot at getting ranked for the main keyword. Reword and "de-optimise" the category page, so it doesn't target the keyword. This doesn't work well from UX point of view as the category needs to describe what it is and enable visitors to navigate to it. Anybody else gone through a similar conundrum? How did you end up going about it? Thanks Julian
On-Page Optimization | | tprg0 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but these pages are noindex
Saw an issue back in 2011 about this and I'm experiencing the same issue. http://moz.com/community/q/issue-duplicate-page-content-in-crawl-diagnostics-but-these-pages-are-noindex We have pages that are meta-tagged as no-everything for bots but are being reported as duplicate. Any suggestions on how to exclude them from the Moz bot?
On-Page Optimization | | Deb_VHB0 -
Pages exclusion
Hi there! I don't want to "make relevan"t 3 of the pages my website has. Should I give them a title and a description even if I dont't want them to be shown in the SERPs? Is there any penalty from google if I don't do so? I guess no but just to confirm. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Is On Page SEO Dead?
Hey Guys, Search Engine Roundtable has published a short post about this a few days ago, quoting senior member at WebmasterWorld forums who said: "The way I see it, on-page text today is for the "relevance" part of the total algorithm. The whole algorithm is, in broad strokes, "relevance + connectedness + quality". After you've clearly stated the relevance of the page, then the rest of your ranking power comes from elsewhere. I've added on-page bold tags with no effect. I've added or changed h1 elements with no effect. Not too long ago, those might well have done something, but that's not the game anymore. And moving from a table layout to a CSS-P layout today might get you nowhere, too. It all depends how deeply complicated the table layout was, I think." http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4408395.htm Is it true? Is on-page SEO really dead? What do you think?
On-Page Optimization | | ShivaS0 -
I am optimizing my webpages according to suggestions from the On Page Report Card. Should I have more than one keyword for a page?
I am optimizing my webpages according to suggestions from the On Page Report Card. Should I have more than one keyword for a page or should I make separate pages for each keyword even when they are similar? Will Google penalize me for making similar pages? Imagine selling, bargain milk chocolate peanut clusters. Keywords examples could be: Bargain chocolate Bargain milk chocolate Bargain milk chocolate peanut clusters Bargain chocolate peanut clusters Chocolate peanut cluster bargains Milk chocolate peanut cluster bargains Etc. Will one page called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolatepeanutclusters.com be OK or should I have one called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolate.com and one called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolatepeanutclusters.com and one called http://mycompany/chocolatepeanutclusterbargains.com , etc.? Thanks for your advice.
On-Page Optimization | | KSHAYY0 -
Should I use a Page Name variable after the ? for a dynamic web page
I'm converting for static to dynamic web pages. It appears that the page name is used for page ranking in the search engines. Will adding a Page Name variable help to increase our SEO. For example aspecialgift.com/subcat.php?PageName=GiftPage&ProductID=ABCDE. Does the page name variable make a difference?
On-Page Optimization | | NCBob0